Arts & Culture

KCUR’s Arts & Culture Desk covers arts news from music to visual art to dance and theater, with a focus on Kansas and Missouri.

Our reporters explore the behind-the-scene stories about newsmakers and emerging artists. We also take a look at the intersections of arts and technology, science and creativity, and present profiles of creative people.

Kansas City, MO – Passover celebrates the journey of the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt. A special text called The Haggadah organizes the Seder meal through rituals such as dipping parsley in salt water to symbolize the tears of suffering. The evening progresses through prayers and song and ends with the celebration of freedom. Laura Ziegler visited the home of John and Debbie Starr -- who invited family and friends for their Seder -- and prepared this audio postcard.

Kansas City based musician Shane Borth plays a number of instruments, but his primary ones are violin and viola (he's a violist for the Des Moines Symphony). This weekend, Borth will collaborate with the ensemble of artists called Quixotic Performance Fusion in an improvisational piece, and here, gives a sample.

Dan White has documented the jazz scene in Kansas City for more than two decades. A new exhibit in the Changing Gallery at the American Jazz Museum displays 50 of White's black and white photographs, along with anecdotes from interviews.

Vocalist Myra Taylor is a veteran of the original Kansas City swing sound and started out singing and dancing in the early 1930s on 18th and Vine. Throughout her long career, she's shared the stage with Jay McShann, Sarah Vaughan, Nat "King" Cole, and many others. Taylor continues to perform in her hometown often as part of the quartet known as the Wild Women of Kansas City. Myra Taylor turns 89 on Friday, February 24.

By Chuck Haddix (host of KCUR's The Fish Fry), edited by Laura Spencer

Kansas City, MO – Igor and Karina Papikian are both of Armenian and Russian descent. When they were forced to leave their home in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, in 1990 they weren't accepted in either Armenia or Russia. So, they decided to come to the United States. They ended up in Kansas City a place they'd only read about in a Theodore Dreiser novel. Linda Sher spent an evening with the Papikians and their daughter Ana, to learn about their journey, their life and their cooking.

Jazz bassist and vocalist Milt Abel - part of Kansas City's jazz scene for five decades - died on February 3, 2006 after a long illness. Abel grew up in Philadelphia, where he learned to play the stand-up bass, baritone horn, and trombone as a teenager.

By Laura Spencer

Kansas City, MO – KCUR?s Laura Spencer talked to some of the musicans he played with over the years in Kansas City and others who say his musicial talent will not be forgotten.

Painter Anthony Ramos has shows at the American Jazz Museum and the Bruce R Watkins Cultural Center. He was in Kansas City recently for a series of talks around the city and spoke to KC Currents host Delores Jones.

Musician and artist Loren Pickford is a veteran of jazz scenes in Los Angeles, Boston, and Paris. Pickford lived in New Orleans from 1990 to 2005, and here shares the story of his first day in the Big Easy.

By Laura Spencer

Kansas City, MO – Pickford and his wife, Sheila, relocated from New Orleans to Kansas City, Missouri after Hurricane Katrina.

Earlier this year, the Kansas City Ballet School offered a weekly ballet class to twenty Latina girls at Gladstone and Primitivo Garcia elementary schools. And five of those girls were cast in this year's production of The Nutcracker, including 5th grader Christina Sayed who's a lead angel.

Molotov is a Mexican metal/hip-hop band formed in 1995. Their music is in a mixture of Spanish and English, rapped by Tito Fuentes.

By Delores Jones

Kansas City, MO – One of Mexico?s most notorious rock bands have released Con Todo Respeto ? with all due respect - which just won a Latin Grammy for best rock album. The album is tribute to bands like the Beastie Boys and the Clash. They also include a version of Gil Scott Heron?s The Revolution will not be Televised ? which they say applies to Mexico as well as the US.

The face of jazz music on KCUR will change after this weekend. The long running program Just Jazz will end.

By Laura Ziegler

Kansas City, MO – The face of jazz music on KCUR will change after this weekend. The long running program Just Jazz will end. Laura Ziegler has this look back at the show and the hosts who made it unique.

Years before the first of her 76 appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson - years before there was a Tonight Show with Johnny Carson - vocalist Marilyn Maye was learning the art of putting across a song from someone she heard mostly on the radio: Frank Sinatra.

A play based on interviews with Kansas Citians of many diverse traditions.

By Delores Jones

Kansas City, MO – Sunday marks the four-year anniversary of the September eleventh terrorist attacks. The attacks impacted people throughout the country, sometimes bringing out cultural divisions that already existed between communities. As part of the Mosaic Life Stories project, writer Donna Ziegenhorn interviewed Kansas Citians of different backgrounds to write ?The Hindu and the Cowboy.?

Kansas City, MO – UMKC professor Louis Imperiale talks about the Argentine film Wild Horses. Imperiale will be presenting the 1995 film at the Latin American Cinema Festival of Kansas City, which begins this month at the Rio Theater in Overland Park. Films from Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Peru will be presented every Saturday until October 1.

Ailey Camp is over now, and the young people who participated in the intensive six week dance program are waiting out the hot days of August for school to begin. This is the final audio diary in our series with Ailey Camper Memory Brown.

The Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey began its 17th summer camp recently. In the first of three parts, we'll talk to Ailey Camper Memory Brown. Brown is 14 years old and lives with her grandmother. She was ecstatic when she got accepted to Ailey camp.

Filmmaker John Waters grew up in Baltimore in the 1950s and began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid 1960s, screened in rented church halls and attended by underground audiences who heard of the films by word-of-mouth and leaflets. His first success: the 1972 film Pink Flamingos starring Divine.

Hairspray opened Tuesday, March 29 at the Music Hall and runs through April 10, 2005.

Staff Sergeant Michael Argumedo is a U.S. Army Reservist from Lawrence, Kansas stationed in Kuwait, just a few miles from the Iraqi border. He writes under the pen name Mickey Cesar, and his poetry has been described as dealing with "Saturday nights alone, Sunday morning cafes full of cigarette smoke" and loss.